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Thank you for the beautiful comments and support yesterday. It was very nice to feel loved. I KNOW that I’m loved, but it’s nice to FEEL it sometimes.

I slept a bit better last night, but only a bit. Perhaps I need to talk to my doctor about my medications or something because I haven’t been sleeping well. Last night while lying awake I was writing the most awesome post in my head, but now that I’m at the computer, I don’t know that it’ll have the same flair as it did in my brain. Here goes anyway.

I’m not sure if I read this somewhere or if it’s something that I just happened to think and the idea grew in my mind until I convinced myself I must have read it somewhere. In any case, if I did read it somewhere, and I’m not giving you credit, it’s not for lack of care, merely lack of realization of where this information in my head came from. In any case, I THINK I read it somewhere, so that’s how I’m going to write… as if I DID read it somewhere.

So, I read somewhere that Southern women are more prone to depression than other women. I think this makes sense. We’re taught from a very early age to hide our emotions and play the nice hostess. Miranda Lambert has a song called Mama’s Broken Heart where the girl is going through a difficult breakup and the mother “preaches to the daughter” with the lyrics:

Go and fix your make up
It’s just a breakup
Run and hide your crazy
and start actin’ like a lady
‘Cause I raised you better
Gotta keep it together
Even when you fall apart

I think this sums up how Southern women are raised very well. I remember my mother telling me often how I needed to be less dramatic, how I needed to “stop wearing my feelings on my sleeve”, and how I should stop letting everyone know how I feel all the time. Play the part even when you don’t feel like it. Be a good hostess and pretend that everything’s okay even when you’re falling apart inside. “No one needs to know your business.” “Stop letting everyone know what’s going on in your life.”

Obviously that last one didn’t stick or I wouldn’t be on here, right? In any case, many Southern girls grow up in homes where this is the norm. No one wants us to actually let them know how we feel. They just want us to pretend to be okay, and then that means we are.

So yeah, I definitely grew up in a home like that, and I think it contributed. “Put on your big girl panties and deal.” “Stop your crying and stop feeling everything so much. Sometimes you just have to let things go.” And, yes, sometimes you do have to let things go, but the big stuff? The big stuff you need to deal with. Don’t bottle it up and save it for later. Deal with it now, else later turns into too late and it becomes so big that you don’t even know where to begin to deal with it.

In other news, I took an “assessment” for a job on Monday. Apparently I have to do so well on the assessment before they’ll call me in for an interview. I haven’t heard anything yet, but here’s hoping. The job sounds pretty awesome.